James Madison

Madison's most concrete constitutional intervention came after the American founding convention: he introduced amendments in Congress in June 1789 and pressed for their passage. Congress revised the proposals and the states ratified ten as the Bill of Rights in 1791. Those protections remain central to disputes over government power. Calling him their sole author would miss the pressure from ratification debates and the work of other legislators, while treating his original views as fixed would miss his change of mind about the need for them.